ANY EXPLANATION OF MY decision to marry might sound provincial and patriarchal. Perhaps my heart, desperate for superlative expression, reached down into its own depths and in lieu of inventing something new and iconoclastic, seized upon the most banal tradition. But we didn’t marry because of religious alignment or pressure from our families, not because I wanted a ring—we don’t wear rings—or kids or a wedding. (We don’t and didn’t have either.) I felt already pledged to him, and marriage seemed the starkest way to illustrate it because of what marriage (had) represented to me before him, which was nothing. I wanted to demonstrate—to myself and to him—that he was the only one I would do this for or want this with because he was the only one who could fill it with meaning. Our marriage matters to me not because I care about marriage but because I care about Sam.